"In certain cases, I believe the name and professed ideology
of the system is unimportant. Stalin, ******, Pol Pot, etc.
can be considered criminally insane, and their actions
represent the worst of a deranged personality and not the
tenants of any particular political system."
Patently, and rather demonstrably untrue. The
psychopathology involved was one of groups, not
individuals... and socialistic/Marxist systems are
inherently vulnerable as are most other "systems" founded on
the European Counter-enlightenment (which includes Nazism).
The key variable isn't "left" or "right," but the degree to
which the system requires state domination of individual
liberty and discretion. And all of this, Thomas, is rather
obvious and non-controversial except to Marxists.
"But Salvador Allende won a democratic election in Chile, as
opposed to being installed during a violent revolution. This
makes outside interference to remove him and his government
profoundly undemocratic and immoral if you consider
democratic governance to be a right."
Well, apart from observing that some forms of democracy lend
themselves to the rise of tyrants (the PR system in the
Weimar Republic, for example) I'm not really excusing the
action that was taken, just pointing out relative evil
between, fascism and Marxism. I don't think it was
legitimate do depose an elected leader. The fact is that
Marxism has been responsible for far more murders and deaths
than fascism, by an order of magnitude... with perhaps
Nazism (which was more than fascism, but a blood cult). The
reason for that may simply be that Marxism is more
attractive. Anyway, we supported certain Marxist
governments, most notably Yugoslavia's and China's, against
the "Soviets," clearly because of "balance of power"
considerations, rather than a conviction that Chinese
Communism was necessarily "good" and Soviet Communism evil.
So it's not surprising that we supported fascist bad guys
for similar reasons.
Bottom line, although you can probably tar the anti-Marxists
with violations of purist morality there isn't any way to
salvage from that justifications favoring the Marxist
systems they opposed. They were at least as evil as chattel
slavery, and probably worse.
Put another, and perhaps more intuitive way, the
preservation of a reasonably civil society within the
liberal/capitalist democracies <em>does not depend on the
perfection of human nature</em>, and that's the real
difference. Liberal democracy assumes *human nature is not
perfectible" and therefore strives for the 'least bad"
government. Totalitarianism, founded on various "Ur Myths"
strives for the "ideal government' (based on the ideal
collective, race perfection, or an ideal spiritual vision)
which is an entirely different thing. And furthermore, all
of the latter have direct philosophical ties to the European
Counter-enlightenment.
"The road to Hell is paved with realist intentions. Immoral
actions are still immoral, even if the ultimate goal is a
laudable one."
Strictly speaking that's not true. Being realistic doesn't
guarantee success, it just improves the odds. At any rate
there's a difference between the "realism" of accepting
autocracies for the sake of stability, and the realism of
replacing them with liberal/democracies because the
stability and autocracy are now incompatible.
"Please show one example where I have condoned autocracy of
any type. This will be a futile task, since the above
question has a false premise. "Communist" autocracies in
most cases have had the advantage of at least providing for
the basic needs of all people, while most fascist
governments pander to the wealthy elite’s while the masses
suffer from abject poverty."
Sounds like you're condoning them to me. But even if that
had validity, which it does not, it could hardly be argued
that a system like Ba'athism that *combines* fascist and
Marxist totalitarianism is acceptable on any grounds...
autocracy aside.
"> 2. And most significantly (and I really want an answer to
this one), why do
> you now support the same foreign policy position in Iraq
> that you
disdained
> almost 30 years ago in Chile?
Yet another question with a false premise. My position on
Iraq was that the UN should have demanded a large, PERMANENT
presence of weapons inspectors in Iraq as long as Hussein
and his ilk were in power in Iraq, backed by force if
necessary. Since from the fall of 2002 to the time the UN
withdrew its inspectors due to the immanent US invasion,
Hussein acceded to that demand. Therefore, the US invasion
at the time it occurred was unnecessary and immoral."
How would the presence of weapons inspectors, absent a will
to enforce anything, have made a difference? And it
certainly would have made *no difference at all* in terms of
the totalitarian nature of the society. This is an attitude
that I find almost inexplicable in the left. The assumption
that because you "act" a certain way your conviction will
translate into good behavior of the opponent. Saddam only
agreed to the inspections in the first place, because there
were a few hundred thousand US troops on his border. Remove
the realistic consequences for bad acts, and there isn't
much doubt that the bad acts would continue.
And again, the only thing "immoral" about the invasion is
that it didn't happen earlier.
"How the above position has any similarity to the position
that the US should not have interfered with the
DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED Chilean government of Salvador
Allende is beyond me."
Well you brought it up, not me. Personally, I think it's
irrelevant.
--
--Scott "Tom Sherman" <
[email protected]> wrote in
message
news:[email protected]...
> Freewheeling wrote:
>
> > The number of murders that have been documented against
> > Pinochet are in
the
> > hundreds rather than the thousands, but lets assume
> > 3,000. A couple of points:
> >
> > 1. That number pales in comparison to the number of
> > people murdered
under
> > dictatorships of the left, which all-tolled in the
> > twentieth century
number
> > well over 100 million (over 30 million under Stalin
> > alone).
>
> In certain cases, I believe the name and professed
> ideology of the system is unimportant. Stalin, ******, Pol
> Pot, etc. can be considered criminally insane, and their
> actions represent the worst of a deranged personality and
> not the tenants of any particular political system. We
> could therefore consider Mussolini and Franco, but not
> ****** to be representative of Fascism; and Lenin, Mao,
> and Castro but not Stalin and Pol Pot to be representative
> of Communism.
>
> > 2. The operation itself was proposed and carried out
> > *during a global
war*
> > with the above forces, which at the time had enslaved
> > another 100
million
> > people in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States.
>
> But Salvador Allende won a democratic election in Chile,
> as opposed to being installed during a violent revolution.
> This makes outside interference to remove him and his
> government profoundly undemocratic and immoral if you
> consider democratic governance to be a right.
>
> > 3. There were lots of similar operations and policies
> > aimed at "balance
of
> > power" and dictated by a "realist foreign policy" that
> > had no interest
in
> > promoting democracy, and that is currently in an
> > internal war with those wishing to spread the franchise
> > of democracy for security reasons. Most
of
> > these "realist" foreign policy professionals have
> > adopted the racist position that Arabs are unfit for
> > democracy and that we should therefore simply appoint a
> > strong man, a Pinochet if you like, in Iraq... and
leave.
> > They are also the primary advisors to John Kerry.
>
> The road to Hell is paved with realist intentions. Immoral
> actions are still immoral, even if the ultimate goal is a
> laudable one.
>
> > Which leads me to a couple of questions:
> >
> > 1. Why is it you oppose autocracy always and only if it
> > involves a
rightist
> > dictator, and never if it involves a (usually far more
> > murderous)
leftist
> > dictator?
>
> Please show one example where I have condoned autocracy of
> any type. This will be a futile task, since the above
> question has a false premise.
>
> "Communist" autocracies in most cases have had the
> advantage of at least providing for the basic needs of all
> people, while most fascist governments pander to the
> wealthy elite’s while the masses suffer from abject
> poverty.
>
> > 2. And most significantly (and I really want an answer
> > to this one), why
do
> > you now support the same foreign policy position in Iraq
> > that you
disdained
> > almost 30 years ago in Chile?
>
> Yet another question with a false premise. My position on
> Iraq was that the UN should have demanded a large,
> PERMANENT presence of weapons inspectors in Iraq as long
> as Hussein and his ilk were in power in Iraq, backed by
> force if necessary. Since from the fall of 2002 to the
> time the UN withdrew its inspectors due to the immanent US
> invasion, Hussein acceded to that demand. Therefore, the
> US invasion at the time it occurred was unnecessary and
> immoral.
>
> How the above position has any similarity to the position
> that the US should not have interfered with the
> DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED Chilean government of Salvador
> Allende is beyond me.
>
> --
> Tom Sherman – Quad City Area
